There is a significant need for better ways to detect, analyze and manipulate biological macromolecules which include DNA and proteins which are the fundamental the building blocks of nature. Improved devices and methods for working with biological macromolecules would have profound consequences on our fundamental understanding of biology, biomedical technologies and nano/micro/macroscopic engineering.
A tremendous body of work over the last several decades has created a growing database of structural information on proteins and nucleic acids. Unfortunately, available techniques for gathering information on individual structures are unpredictable, error prone, and extremely time consuming. Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) techniques give indirect structural results of macro-molecules in solution, but when used with conventional spectrometers, NMR techniques require milligrams of high concentration samples. For many applications, the preparation of these quantities of molecules is impractical.
The ability to quickly and accurately obtain such structural information is enormously important. In medicine, no adequate analytical tools currently exist for examining the proteins of our bodies to give advanced warnings of disease. For many diseases such as Alzheimer's which are caused by protein dysfunction, early detection could save lives by allowing doctors to start drug or other therapies even before physiological or mental deficiencies appear. It would be tremendously useful to have a benchtop-size tool for this task to add to the analytical arsenal in hospitals around the world.
As we learn to engineer biomolecules, we will need tools that allow us to characterize molecules, not only for structure but also for kinetics and dynamics. Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) can be used to measure kinetics and dynamics, but its poor sensitivity prevents NMR from being used to perform many needed functions. A new type of detector capable of sensing tiny magnetic fields is accordingly needed. Such a detector must provide greater sensitivity and the ability to analyze samples that are several orders of magnitude smaller than the sample sizes currently required. The availability of such a detector would decrease the time needed to get structural information by several orders of magnitude, and would vastly increase the rate at which structural information can be acquired, making numerous new applications feasible.
There is a further need for detecting highly focalized electric or magnetic RF/microwave field which exist in other environments. For example, as integrated circuits continue to shrink, and become three dimensional, using probe stations to probe points in operating circuit has become increasingly difficult. A contactless sensor that could detect the highly localized electric or magnetic fields produced at specific locations in operating integrated circuit devices would make it possible to more easily and more accurately evaluate the performance of such devices, speed their development, and provide ways to correct localized defects in devices during the manufacturing process, significantly improving yields.
The ability to generate and detect highly localized fields could also used to write and read data onto magnetic materials. For example, a small field generator could set and evaluate the spin state in a magnetic tunnel junction device, providing memory elements that can switch faster, be more compact, and use less power.